Lowering your XMODS Body

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Lowering your XMODS Body V 1.5

Updates:
January 14th, 2007: Completed V 1.0 of the guide, next update: Filing the wheel wells.
January 14th, 2007: Fixed and added a few things, I'll call this V 1.1
January 15th, 2007: Added a few things, added some photos V 1.2
January 18th, 2007 Added Trimmin' the wheel base V 1.5

So lately, I've been asked quite a few times about lowering xmods bodies, ever since I did my civic. Well, I can only really say that I'm experienced with the generation one Civic body, But I'll put it up as a tutorial anyways.

Okay, as far as tools and items needed, you'll need to find yourself a sharp cutting blade (X-acto knife, scapel, etc) or even better a hobby knife set, some plastic cement or Krazy Glue, a cheap, plastic ruler that your not afraid to cut, because your going to need a precise measurement, some sandpaper (medium grit preferable, I used 120 grit) and a long, narrow block of wood with two of the edges at either end of it cut at 45 degree angles, to make it easier to keep a level surface when sanding, your XMODS Phillips screwdriver, a small container to keep your pieces in, and a round file for shaving the wheel wells (if necessary). My suggestion for your suspension if you have the upgrade is to use blue all around. That way, wheels stay straight up and down, and less chance of your body bottoming out.

Optional tools you might want to use later on: soldering iron with a flat tip and a fine tip, some needle nose pliers, some sort of clamp, and a dremel with a very fine cutting disk on it.

On to the tutorial! :-)

Bringin' it down

Step 1: Okay, before we start with some of the hard stuff, lets modify that ruler. If you haven’t noticed, rulers have a small gap before you reach the 0 mark on the centimeter/millimeter side. In order to get a more accurate reading, your going to be cutting the ruler at the 0 mark on the centimeter/millimeter side, straight across so it’s level and that way you can use the edge as the beginning of the measurement. Once you got that done, test it out. Have your fully assembled XMODS car on a flat level surface, and take a measurement on the clearance between the ground and the front bumper, side skirts, and rear bumper on both sides. Write these down, it’ll make it easier in the end.

Step 2: Remove the your body from the chassis. Once you have it off, flip it over and locate the screws that hold your front bumper on. Once you have found them, unscrew them and place the screws in your small container and just place your front bumper off to the side for now. Next remove the screw that holds the rear clip on, and place it in your parts container. Make sure to put the clip in a place where it won’t get stepped on or lost because it isn’t very strong apposed to the rest of the parts.

Step 3: Now that you have the bumper and rear clip removed, it’s time to take the clip off the chassis. Flip your chassis over and remove the two screws that hold on the clip at the front. Now flip it back up onto its wheels, and remove the screws holding the front shocks on. Once you have those screws out, again make sure to put them in your parts container and place the front clip and shocks with the rest of the parts you’ve removed so far.

Step 4: Okay, now where getting somewhere. We’ll start with the front clip. Grab your cutting utensil and prepare yourself for a long cut, you’ll be at this for a bit. Place your clip so that the lip that goes in the grove on the body is upside down, so u can see the bottom. Make your cut flush where the lip joins at the clip. Make sure to cut this straight, and most of all when cutting, don’t push down hard, you’ll want to make a series of slices across the clip to get a smooth cut which will save you from sanding later on.
Using the dremel: If your good with a dremel, I never did this but if you have a flat cutting disk you can cut with the dremel on a lower RPM, and should give you similar results.

Step 5: Once you get your clip cut, you should have two pieces; the lip, and the “brace”. Okay this is where I might confuse you. The lip was at the top of the brace before you cut it, and underneath there was still a bit of flat space underneath. Well your going to want to take your plastic cement, or whatever form of glue your going to use, and make a bead of it along underneath where the lip was before, at the most bottom part of it, and quickly do the same to the cut side of the lip, and then join the two pieces and hold for a few minutes. Make sure when your joining the pieces, that they are straight and level across, so your body doesn’t go lop-sided. If you want a more solid bond, the next step is what I did, but is optional.

Step 6: Okay, to make your clip stronger, after it has had time for the glue to dry, take your fine tip soldiering iron and heat it up so it’s a good temperature that won’t instantly turn the plastic to liquid, but won’t take forever to get it to melt. Once it’s at the temperature your comfortable with, melt the seam where you glued, halfway through the clip straight across. Now it’s time to build it up. See all that useless plastic where the lip was attached to before? Well now your going to melt it and full in the groove you made on the seam. Keep melting some of the excess plastic and filling in the gap. Once the grove is filled, flip the clip over and do the same to the underside. If you still have extra plastic when your done (believe me you will or at least should), use the flat soldiering tip to melt the rest down onto the clip and spread it all around the seam so it gets nice and thick, that way you’ll have it as strong as possible, but it will look a little on the ugly side but no one sees it anyways.

Step 7: Okay, now that the front clip is done your probably going to want to check and see how low it is. Go ahead and reassemble the body parts you removed, and attach it to the chassis. You may run into problems with the front clip not fitting in the groove on the body, no worries. Just take it back off and sand or file the groove bigger, but take away from the top of the groove and not the bottom.

Step 8: The next thing your going to say is: “Why is my back end so high?” well, when you remove from the front, you gave the body a slight slant downwards to the front, resulting in the back end going higher. Think of it as a teeter totter, except with the pivot point towards the end. If it were to stay level, and then you were to lower the front, the end would slightly rise, which is what happened to your XMODS car. So now you’re going to shorten the pivot point, which is the rear clip.

Step 9: Measure how high the rear was up from the ground. This parts a little tricky but it’s easy don’t worry. Say your rear was ten millimeters off the ground, and you wanted to bring it down to four. Well, the key here is for every millimeter you sand down now, your going to drop the rear about .2 millimeters more. So you’d have to sand the rear clip mount five millimeters to get it to go down six millimeters at the back. The equation for that is 5 mm sanded times 1.2 drop equals 6, the amount of drop you wanted. So figure out just how low you want to go, taking into consideration are the wheels going to rub (shouldn’t in the rear at all), am I going to hit anything, is it going to be too low, etc.

Step 10: Look for the place where the rear clip attaches. Now is a good time to test that ruler out again. Measure how high the clip mount is right now,from the inside of the body to the top of the mount, and figure out how much your going to sand down. I suggest you reassemble the body and check the clearance every 2 mm you sand down. Your going to take that block off wood with the edges cut, and get a strip of sand paper to go around it. Hold the sand paper tight on the wood and lightly sand the clip evenly across the surface. Stop every once and a while to measure and see how much you’ve taken down. Make sure to do a clearance check at 2 mm before the number you came up with before. That way, you can avoid over sanding. If you manage to go too far, you’ll have to build it up with either JB weld, or hot glue.

Step 11: Once your close to your perfect height, measure clearance constantly. You’ll be annoyed by all the reassembly and disassembly, but in the long run the results are far better then even you would have expected.

Trimmin' the wheel base

Alright, assuming that your wheels are rubbing on the wheel wells (why else would you look here), grab your round file and some sandpaper. look at the insides of your wheel wells and estimate how much you want to take off. Use a sharp object to make a mark at that point, preferably marked at the top center of the wheel well. After you've made your mark, take your round file and angle it inwards so that you don't get a bulky looking lip when your done.

Make sure to only file inwards, do not reciprocate back and forward or you'll get "burs" on the outside, so do your xmod a cosmetic favor and only file inwards. Do 2 strokes in, then move over a little, do 2 more strokes, and move again, 2 more strokes, and keep doing this all the way around until you are close to your mark. Once your at this point grab your sand paper and just follow the inside of the wheel well with it, going over the part that you just filed. once your done, you should have a nice, thin even lip all the way around your wheel well, and most of all the inside will be smooth, so if you ever decide to paint your body, you wont see any scratches depending on how well you did.

Hope this helps you all, and most of all have fun with it! I’ll update with pictures as soon as I can, but some pictures won’t be available unless I can find another body and clip for free somewhere. If I somehow get one for free, I'll reload every picture and add more so that you get a better perspective of it all.